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Spotlight on Catch-Up TV: Television Content on Demand, Screen Australia, June 2012

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Spotlight on Catch-Up TV: Television Content on Demand, Screen Australia, June 2012 TV Spotlight on Catch-up TV Television content on demand SPOTLIGHT ON CATCH-UP TV © Screen Australia July 2012 ISBN: 978-1-920998-20-2 The text in this report is released subject to a Creative Commons BY licence (Licence). This means, in summary, that you may reproduce, transmit and distribute the text, provided that you do not do so for commercial purposes, and provided that you attribute the text as extracted from Spotlight on Catch-up TV: Television Content on Demand, Screen Australia, June 2012. You must not alter, transform or build upon the text in this publication. Your rights under the Licence are in addition to any fair dealing rights which you have under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cwlth). For further terms of the Licence, please see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc-nd/3.0/. This report draws from a number of sources. While Screen Australia has undertaken all reasonable measures to ensure its accuracy we cannot accept responsibility for inaccuracies and omissions. www.screenaustralia.gov.au/research Screen Australia – July 2012 2 SPOTLIGHT ON CATCH-UP TV CONTENTS What’s on offer? .................................................................................................................... 4 Australian content ................................................................................................................ 5 Australian drama ........................................................................................................................... 6 Australian documentary ............................................................................................................. 6 How long are programs available?................................................................................... 6 Programming strategies ...................................................................................................................... 7 ABC iView ........................................................................................................................................... 7 SBS On Demand .............................................................................................................................. 7 Plus7 ................................................................................................................................................... 8 NineMSN Video ............................................................................................................................... 8 Watch TV (Network Ten) ............................................................................................................ 8 Access to catch-up TV services ....................................................................................................... 8 Screen Australia – July 2012 3 SPOTLIGHT ON CATCH-UP TV Over the past four years, all five free-to-air broadcasters have launched dedicated ‘catch-up TV’ websites offering recently broadcast television programs on demand. This commitment from established media players to delivering content via the internet is a clear indicator of the evolving ways in which audiences are engaging with long-form screen content. The shift in consumption patterns is being fuelled by factors such as faster download speeds, a growing array of online rental, subscription and download services and, significantly, peer-to-peer file sharing. However, free-to-air television broadcast viewing remains the most ubiquitous form of media consumption in Australia, with 94 per cent of the population watching an average of more than three hours per day.1 Given this dominance, it is reasonable to expect that the networks’ on-demand services will play a key role in attracting a critical mass to online viewing as the market matures. While their primary purpose is to enable viewers to ‘catch up’ with popular programming, catch-up TV services do more than just duplicate the primetime broadcast schedule. They also provide alternative programming to the broadcast offerings, including archives of programs that have aired on Australian free-to-air TV in the past and a limited amount of content that has not aired locally at all. What’s on offer? To better understand the types of content being offered by these on-demand sites, Screen Australia monitored each of the five free-to-air catch-up services for four weeks from 13 February 2012, coinciding with the start of the 2012 television ratings period. During these four weeks, an average of 407 titles was available each week (approximately 1,308 hours of content). By comparison, 64 feature films screened in cinemas and 1,005 television programs were broadcast on free-to-air television each week over the same period. Content offerings – weekly average iView SBS On Plus7 NineMSN Watch TOTAL Demand Video TV Titles 184 87 43 23 71 407 % recently broadcast 97% 85% 51% 54% 60% 81% Hours 305 214 192 345 251 1,308 % recently broadcast 98% 58% 21% 8% 60% 49% The available content varies from week to week as episodes expire and are replaced by new ones, and, to a lesser extent, titles are added and removed from the catalogue. Back catalogue content tends to remain on the services for extended periods of time, so the range of this content on offer is fairly static on a week-to-week basis. The titles available on SBS On Demand vary more than the other services, due to the greater number of one-off programs such as feature films and documentaries. Recently broadcast episodes or standalone programs made up 81 per cent of available titles and 49 per cent of the total hours. The remaining content comprised back catalogue that had 1 Roy Morgan data compiled by Screen Australia, 2011, Beyond the Box Office: Understanding Audiences in a Multi-Screen World (www.screenaustralia.gov.au/research/beyond_box_office.aspx) Screen Australia – July 2012 4 SPOTLIGHT ON CATCH-UP TV been broadcast on Australian television in the past and a limited number of titles that had not aired locally on free-to-air television. Overall, the range of program types available on a network’s catch-up service was more limited than its weekly broadcast offering, with some services providing little or no children’s content, long-form news/current affairs, feature films or sport. Drama and documentary are well represented, as are reality and infotainment programming. Of the 407 titles available on the catch-up TV services: • feature films and television drama accounted for 27 per cent • documentaries for 21 per cent • children’s programs for 25 per cent and • other program types (news/current affairs, infotainment, reality, sport, etc) for 27 per cent. Content offerings by type – weekly average iView SBS On Plus7 NineMSN Watch TV OVERALL Demand Video Titles 184 87 43 23 71 407 - Movies/drama 17% 29% 35% 57% 36% 27% - Documentary 11% 47% 8% 17% 21% 21% - Children’s 49% 0% 16% 0% 7% 25% - Other 23% 24% 41% 26% 36% 27% Hours 305 214 192 345 251 1,308 - Movies/drama 17% 17% 46% 51% 20% 31% - Documentary 8% 29% 3% 14% 8% 12% - Children’s 49% 0% 17% 0% 17% 17% - Other 26% 53% 35% 35% 56% 40% Australian content Overall, 38 per cent of titles (157 programs) and 58 per cent of hours were Australian. In comparison, 33 per cent of titles (332 programs) and 36 per cent of hours broadcast on free- to-air television were Australian. The large proportion of Australian content on catch-up TV services in terms of hours is due in part to substantial back catalogue offerings of Australian programs such as McLeod’s Daughters series 5–8 and Sea Patrol series 1–5 on NineMSN Video. Australian titles accounted for: • 17 per cent of drama titles • 45 per cent of documentary titles • 31 per cent of children’s titles and • 64 per cent of other types of programming. Screen Australia – July 2012 5 SPOTLIGHT ON CATCH-UP TV Content offerings by source – weekly average iView SBS On Plus7 NineMSN Watch TV OVERALL Demand Video Titles 184 87 43 23 71 407 - Local content 37% 34% 21% 46% 57% 38% - Foreign content 63% 66% 79% 64% 43% 62% Hours 305 214 192 345 251 1,308 - Local content 41% 55% 8% 89% 75% 58% - Foreign content 59% 45% 92% 11% 25% 42% Australian drama On average, 19 Australian drama titles were available each week over the four-week survey period, excluding C and P programs. Just over half these titles had been broadcast recently (ie in the preceding four weeks) while eight were back catalogue titles. ABC featured the largest number of Australian drama titles, with iView showing first-run series Outland, The Straits, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and Woodley, as well as short film Last Race. NineMSN Video had the largest archive of back catalogue Australian drama with 118 episodes of McLeod’s Daughters, Sea Patrol seasons 1–5 and Rescue Special Ops season 3. Other back catalogue titles included Mark Loves Sharon on Watch TV and Stories from the Golf on SBS On Demand. Although several Australian feature films were broadcast on free-to-air television during this period, including Welcome to Woop Woop on Channel Nine, Razzle Dazzle on GEM and My Husband My Killer on Channel 7, no Australian feature films were made available on these services over the four-week period. Australian documentary On average, 38 Australian documentary titles were available each week over the survey period, of which 19 were recently broadcast. Most of the first-release Australian documentaries that aired on the broadcast channels also appeared on the catch-up services, with the exceptions of popular series RBT (Channel Nine) and The Force (Channel 7). The Australian documentary titles on the commercial
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